The Breakup Blueprint Chapter 1

At a friends' gathering, my bestie forwarded me a post:

[How do you get a girlfriend of ten years to initiate a breakup?]

I cursed the scumbag in my head and clicked on it.

The author of the post was my boyfriend.

* * *

Staring at the title, the author's username, and the profile picture, my mind went completely blank.

My first reaction: my best friend sent this to the wrong person.

With trembling hands, I scrolled to the very top and started reading word by word.

But the more I read, the more my heart sank.

The post was incredibly detailed.

So detailed that every little thing was described perfectly.

Making it impossible for me not to believe it.

The post started by talking about how hard he pursued me, the excitement and beauty of finally winning me over.

Then it talked about when I bombed my SATs and didn't get into my dream school. He stayed with me, secretly applying to a college near mine.

When he was doing his senior thesis and working across two different cities, we accumulated over four hundred round-trip Greyhound and Amtrak ticket stubs.

Back then, maybe because of love, he just wanted to hold me in his hands. He never felt it was a burden.

Even my occasional bad moods were easily noticed by him.

He'd lose his appetite and sleep, buy an overnight ticket, and ride 12 hours just to see me.

It was like he had endless energy and love.

But I don't know when it started, he got bored.

Yet, because I almost died saving him from a car accident, leaving one of my arms half-ruined and unable to lift heavy things...

He was afraid of being called a monster. He didn't want to be the one to bring up the breakup.

But he truly couldn't stand being with me anymore.

He grew more and more repulsed by my touch, annoyed by anything related to me.

Sometimes, just hearing my voice...

...made him inexplicably irritated and angry. At his worst, he even wanted to scream at me, "Why don't you just go die?"